The Coffee: CAFEUNO Young Producers Lot Importer: Honduras Coffee Alliance Origin: El Paraíso, El Paraíso Processing: Washed Varietals: Parainema Tasting: Caramel, Orange, Honey The Importer: Honduras Coffee Alliance It all started in the back play area of a church in Lombard, IL in the early 2000's where Makeworth and Honduran Coffee Alliance met. At the time they didn't know it, but Tim (Makeworth) and Sean (HCA) would go from being youth group kids to eventually working inside the specialty coffee world. In all seriousness, it's been an amazing re-convergence to have HCA be an importing partner since we opened our roasting operation. Going on a 3rd year of taking some delicious, traceable and impactful coffees is a joy that makes working with coffee so great. Sean and his team continue to pioneer excellent coffees from Honduras in a way that seeks sustainable and meaningful supply chain relationships. On the secondary: this coffee shares freight and logistics with Algrano coffee importers. Algrano might have one of the most progressive and creative operation for importing coffees in this era. Truly. They are bringing transparency, financing solutions and partnerships to the next level between producer and roaster and we are grateful for every minute of it. Shout out to David, our rep, who helped facilitate these beautiful coffees. The Producer: CAFEUNO CAFEUNO is essentially a cooperative of smaller cooperatives. It has a centralized facility with mechanical and shaded drying facilities and a cupping lab. CAFEUNO started in 2015 and began with a few rough years but has since seen exciting growth towards helping the under-represented producers of the El Paraiso region. It started with 20 cooperatives and over 1000 producer members but when a small amount of investment was required from each member, only 300 producers decided to continue and drove forward the initial vision knowing that the way coffee was currently being sold was never going to be sustainable. It is now made up of 11 cooperatives and a total of 158 producer members after adding 38 more in late 2023. CAFEUNO’s manager, Williams, is a 4th generation coffee farmer and has a farm that was part of one of the original member organizations of CAFEUNO. He became the manager in 2016 and has been very proactive working with producers to invest in producing specialty coffee with the hope of finding differentiated prices and connecting directly to buyers. They are very intent on finding a better way to produce and market coffee for their producers.